


watched it for a little while (i like to watch things on TV)

by infiniteandsmall



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Gen, Growing Up, M/M, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon, everyone discovering things about themselves, lesbian mila, viktor as a weird artsy baby muse, viktor just really loves skating his friends and his husband, viktor learning how to be human
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-23
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-10-09 18:31:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10418472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infiniteandsmall/pseuds/infiniteandsmall
Summary: Viktor walks down the street with his earbuds in. He's on his way to the rink, the trek the same as it’s been every morning for the past few months,  snow sticking to the soles of his boots and scattering up in clouds around his ankles, too cold to turn to slush underfoot: St. Petersberg ensconced in the deepest part of winter like a lucky charm tucked under layers of costume. The snow turns the sounds of the city dull, an empty ringing in Viktor’s ears that music covers up.-aka four times viktor was someone's weird art baby music video muse and one time he was someone's gay in-love music video muse.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roguish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roguish/gifts).



> i don't know what this weird little thing is but i kind of love it??  
> i just love writing viktor and i especially just love writing baby viktor. what a weirdo.  
> fudging facts and timelines left and right probably. title from satellite of love by lou reed.  
> thank you so much to elsa roguish for helping me figure this out and encouraging me to write it, and for suggesting and providing velvet goldmine clips to inspire the velvet-goldmine-esque scenes!

Viktor walks down the street with his earbuds in. He's on his way to the rink, the trek the same as it’s been every morning for the past few months,  snow sticking to the soles of his boots and scattering up in clouds around his ankles, too cold to turn to slush underfoot: St. Petersberg ensconced in the deepest part of winter like a lucky charm tucked under layers of costume. The snow turns the sounds of the city dull, an empty ringing in Viktor’s ears that music covers up.

He listens to Lady Gaga on his mp3 player, and it makes him tilt his chin and swish his hips as he goes. The songs themselves hadn’t knocked him flat, when Chris had insisted he listen to it in a flurry of texts, but the memory of the videos that went with it still does, the heady latex-and-drag-makeup a taste in his mouth and a place deep in his guts. Viktor likes to listen to music that makes him see things. This song makes him see things, mind wandering into movies and moves. 

He should be listening the music Yakov had chosen for his free skate, but it's  _ boring,  _ and Viktor hates being bored more than anything else. It's an insistent itch that turns lemon - juice acidic in his skull. He's good at ignoring most types of pain, cataloging them impartially: bruises dull, blisters sharp and surprising. There's something almost satisfying about the all-consuming roar of a sprain, but boredom is intolerable. 

Viktor listens to all types of music, and he likes any songs that makes him want to skate or dance. He’s nineteen, and he’s been vetoing the music Yakov chose for him since he was a sixteen-year-old obsessed with Stravinsky and really into looking at stuff about getting tied up on the internet. Both of those are still true, but he likes to find new things, constantly, and so the old things occupy places far back in his brain. His body’s all filled up with this song, now. It makes him want to skate, and dance, and  _ make. _ Make what?: a program for an exhibition, maybe. 

He lets his feet carry him to rink on autopilot. He thinks of his feet cutting shapes into the ice.

 

That is the season he skates to the opening theme from a psychological horror film, all creeping violin and harpsichord, baroque and Vivaldi-esque. His costume is a deep blood-red, like it’s been soaked and dried in it. He’d first watched the movie alone in his bed, Makkachin warm and smelling like the hot air from an opened oven curled next to him. He had watched it again and again, an eerie habit. He knew he would grow tired of it soon. He had done this with movies in the past, but until then: he watched the movie with a boy. The boy had been tense next to him, had said he needed to go home. 

Viktor had finished the movie alone, turned the subtitles off and let his mind wander. People had been surprised, people had roared approval: last season he’d been virginal in white mesh.

That is the season, too, that he sees someone tweet at him: _ omg im watching figure skating (???) w ava and @v_nikiforov is THE human for the “brown recluse” music video.  _ Of course, they’re not tweeting at him, but rather tweeting into the void of his mentions, which are always a mess even though he just got his twitter account a month ago. But Viktor is lying around, distracting himself with the internet while he works his way through a protein shake, and the person’s avatar catches his eye: they’re dark-skinned and wearing reptilian white colored contacts, their cheekbones dusted with glitter. 

Why not, Viktor thinks, and clicks around on their profile until he finds a link to their youtube channel. 

Viktor listens to the song, wonders why it doesn’t have more views: it’s sharp and spiny and strange, and wonderful. He finds himself sending a direct message:

_ hi!! :) i saw your tweet! i really enjoyed the song and i would love to be in the video!! _

He wanders into the kitchen, cleans his thermos in the sink. When he goes back to the couch, Makkachin’s slumping into his spot, and he has a new direct message.

_ omg...wow!!  _ they’ve responded already.  _ i was not expected that you would see that, haha...if you’re interested that would be AMAZING i don’t really follow figure skating but i was watching one of your competitions on tv with a friend and i was like WOW _

_ like your aura is just a little ~off a little wrong and it’s perfect?? and your hair and your just...general vibe made me think of the song so much _

_ omg no offense like i think that is why you are so compelling to watch!! anyways uh i probably can’t really pay you much?? My label is small?? but thank you so much for offering?? _

Viktor is nineteen. He’s not an Olympian (yet, he thinks). He isn’t rich: his apartment is a shoebox with windows that seep cold, which is okay, here if he sees a spider in the corner he can let it stay and check up on it in the mornings. He probably should be worrying about payment. But, he thinks, he would do this for free: he feels something creep into his chest as he rereads the message, because  _ yes,  _ he’s always thought there was something  _ off  _ about him, something vaguely ugly and repulsive, something compelling, sure, but terrible. He’s been trained to be graceful in everything, from his toes to his wrists, and he knows he is lovely because people seem to look back at him again and again, but maybe it is not just because he is lovely. Maybe that was why the world’s surprise hadn’t been quite satisfying, this season: deep down, they’d known that Viktor be could fey and horrific.

He loves this person, fiercely, for a hot piercing moment, for seeing that his fingers are little too long, maybe, his chin a little too sharp, his eyes a little too blue.

He replies,  _ your bio says that you’re from berlin, i have a competition in germany next month, maybe we could arrange to film something then?? _

Sponsorships are conducted through Yakov: Viktor is a loose cannon, a random dice roll. This. He is nineteen. Their bio says they are twenty. It feels like stepping onto clean ice.

_ wow for sure! _ they reply.  _ ill talk to the label and get back to you asap about $$$...hey, i’ll throw some really nice vodka for it...you russians are all about vodka right?? _

_ vodka, lighter fluid, whatever!  _ Viktor replies: he’d pair it with a cheery hand-wave in person. 

He pulls his phone out from between the couch cushions. He needs to tell someone, and his first thought is Chris, of course, a thought that began coming easy sometime between Chris’s senior debut and a whispered exchange of mutual best-friendship in between kisses in the back of a taxi in Budapest.

_ i just did something regrettable and yakov might kill me??? _

Chris will probably reply with  _ what’s new there?  _

Viktor goes back to the youtube tab, still open, presses play again, sets his laptop aside.

“Makkachin,” he says, getting to his feet, pinpricks running up and down his arms and legs that need to be danced out. Makkachin raises his head, eyes Viktor sideways.

“Pup!” he says, clucks to him. “Come dance!” 

Makkachin does. He’s not a puppy anymore, but if Viktor is dancing, he will dance, too.

 

Viktor is nineteen. Yuuri is fifteen. It is Yuuri’s first year of high school and his last year of Junior’s: he tumbles into his bed after homework and practice and chores exhausted. He doesn’t watch much on Youtube besides a couple of Viktor’s skates: Hatsetsu is still blinking, bleary-eyed, over the sudden vast gulf of the world, and so the onsen only has dial-up. He and Yuuko still split the cost of magazine subscriptions, though she's first-relationship preoccupied with Takeshi.

Viktor tweets the link, which Yuuri never sees: the music is filled with screams and growls and wet gasps that sound like pressing a thumb into the rotten spot on a piece of fruit, sharp synths that sound distilled from a power drill. Those who click it might see:

Viktor writhing in a vat of black goo like some strange larvae emerging from a cocoon, hair slicked back to show the high pale skullish vulnerability of his forehead, tossing his hands to make dark sticky arcs. The sixteenth-note run of his bared backbone, bump-bump-bump, from overhead.

In the behind the scenes video, Viktor sits, a wicked pixie queen surrounded by supplicants, a boy with long light hair and bright sharp eyes, nails made into talons with press-on acrylics, smoke-filled bubble in hand. The pixel quality is low, the hand that films unsteady.

“Wow!” he says, flattening his palm gingerly, and everyone around him is drawn close, charmed.

He curls his fingers in, sinks the talons slow through the fine soap film. The camera zooms in. The bubble pops.

“Amazing!” he says, laughing.

 

_ viktor stefani nikiforov germanotta? _ Chris texts him.  _ holy shit??? you did that??? thanks now weird shit turns me on?? _

_ youre welcome ;)  _ Viktor texts back.

The song blows up: Viktor’s twitter mentions are even more of a mess than they were before. People send him art in which he is a computer glitch, an eldritch being, a selkie, an alien.

Next season he pulls his hair into a ballet bun and does  _ Swan Lake _ , with clear nods to Matthew Bourne’s choreography, all delicate clean ache. The sportscasters say that he surprises again.

Viktor smiles the smile that is megawatt even in poor quality youtube videos, the one that makes teenaged boys discover something about themselves.

Yuuri Katsuki has already discovered that something. He thinks, I will skate on the same ice as you someday, and then he does to bed, because he has to be up early to walk Vic-chan before practice the next day.

 

After that season, people don't bother asking if he's gay anymore. It was either that or the fact that last time he'd been asked, he'd been buzzing with post competition high, sitting between Cao Bin, the silver medalist, and Chris, who'd taken bronze, and had responded by pulling Chris close, wrapping his hand around the back of Chris’s neck with a showy put-upon possessiveness. Chris had grinned: maybe Viktor had surprised the reporters, but he hadn't surprised Chris.

Viktor closed the space, filled it with a messy performative kiss with obvious tongue.

He and Chris had made out just long enough that everyone in the room must have felt a little uncomfortable.

In hindsight, that was what had probably gotten it across.

Chris had found the ensuing flurry of questions about whether they were dating about as funny as Viktor had, which was to say,  _ very, very, very funny _ , laughing until their sides hurt in the hotel lobby about it.

They’d been replaced by questions about boys who Viktor took home from clubs, which Viktor brushed off with jokes the way Yakov had taught him, although Yakov didn’t always appreciate the jokes: “just preparing for the Olympic Village!” Viktor had chirped, which got him a lecture after the press conference. 

It had been a good joke, though, and the next reporter had asked him a question about his hopes for the upcoming Olympics, which were the sort of questions Viktor wanted to answer.

Clubs are fun, and sex is fun, but Viktor’s not sure why anyone would bother to think much about them when they could be thinking about skating.

 

“No,” Yakov says.

“Well, I’ve sort of done it already,” Viktor says, loud on the phone like he always is. Yakov can see him standing there, twirling the ends of his hair around a finger, hip cocked.

“You could at least have the grace to sound ashamed,” Yakov says.

“I thought I did,” Viktor says. 

Yakov lets out a strangled sound of frustration. This kid. It’s good he’s good, it’s too bad he knows it. “If you’re not back in time for practice tomorrow—”

“I’m at the airport already,” Viktor says. “I wouldn’t skip  _ practice _ .”

Yakov can’t yell, because Viktor isn’t lying. “You’re not getting another day off for a long time, Nikiforov,” he says, and hangs up.

He slides his phone into his pocket (a flipphone, still, because he knows the day that he gets one of those iPhones is the day that he’s going to be pelted with those emojis that the kids are always sending) and turns his attention back to Georgi, who is waiting, attentive.

Georgi is devoted. Georgi toes the line. Despite that (because of that), he will never be Viktor. 

“Again!” he calls, brushing guilt aside. 

 

This video, Yuuri sees. He’s seventeen to Viktor’s twenty-one, pondering an offer to train in Detroit next year. The artist is an American, most of his music about pretty boys and sex and drugs: it sounds like neon and sweat. Most of his music videos feature pretty boys and bright lights and nice cars. 

Viktor is the prettiest boy: he  _ fits _ in the bright lights that turn his hair blue-green-red. The camera loves him: he pouts and he preens and he shows that he can bend himself backwards nearly in half, the singer looking on coolly.

_ I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS IS REAL?? _

_ THIS IS A FUCKING GIFT?!?  _ people post on the livejournal skating anon memes that Yuuri browses when he should be doing literally anything else. 

Viktor saunters into the frame towards the singer, slings an arm over his shoulder, slithers down his body in a way that makes Yuuri’s terrible brain immediately and vividly link the idea of Viktor Nikiforov and blowjobs. 

He pauses the video, switches the tab to livejournal. All of a sudden the posters plastered on his wall seem incriminating. He’s aware that his interest in Viktor pulled out of the “strictly professional” station a long time ago, and realistically probably...never pulled into that station at all. But there are lines, and staring at his posters and imagining Viktor talking to him rinkside, smiling at him, those blue eyes brilliant, is on one side of the line, and  _ sex stuff  _ is on the other.

He knows that Viktor probably has sex with a lot of guys. He’s seen the paparazzi photos taken outside of clubs. He’s seen the  _ videos  _ of Viktor and Christophe Giacometti. He’s probably good at it, eyes sparkling and cheeks flushed the way they are right after a skate, that coy tossed-off smile and those graceful long-fingered hands…

Yuuri slams his laptop shut.  _ No!  _ he tells himself very firmly, and picks up his math textbook.

 

Yakov is unfortunate enough to see the video. He is used to seeing Viktor hanging off of boys’ arms like some kind of twinky (Yakov doesn’t know or want to know exactly what this means, but apparently the adjective fits Viktor) octopus. He’s accepted it at this point.

He is not used his student and the phrase “bump a line” appearing in the same piece of media content. He is even less used to his student and what looks like an actual line, even though it is probably flour, appearing in the same piece of media content. He has most definitely not accepted it.

“Yakov! Of course I’ve never done cocaine!” Viktor says, indignant. “I’m an  _ athlete _ !”

“You’re an idiot, is what you are,” Yakov says. “The last thing you need a drug scandal. They’re going to be saying that you’re checking into rehab by tomorrow.”

Viktor rolls his eyes. “It’s obviously for, like, the look of it. Like when 50 Cent talks about getting shot nine times. Except he actually did get shot, like, nine times.” 

Yakov doesn’t keep up with these things. He has a hard enough time keeping up with the constantly shifting ISU regulations and rules. “It doesn’t seem so goddamn farfetched, with the shenanigans that you and Giacometti are always getting up to,” he says, and Viktor sucks in a sharp little breath.

His face gets even more colorless than it usually is and he says, in a rush, “Yakov, it’s not Chris’s fault, I promise, he’s always talking me out of doing really  _ really  _ stupid things even if maybe we end up doing things that are still kind of stupid, but at least they’re  _ less  _ stupid and—”

Yakov holds up a hand. “Just. Go get your skates on, Nikiforov. I’m not planning on turning you and Giacometti into Romeo and Juliet.”

Viktor looks at him, eyes wide.

“You’re going to be on a  _ very  _ short leash for the rest of the season, though, do you hear?” he says.

“I hear,” Viktor says, nodding seriously. He goes off quietly to get his skates, shoulders tensed. 

It’s early: none of Yakov’s other skaters will be here for at least an hour, the rink big and empty and quiet. 

Giacometti, he thinks. Not a bad kid. Impulsive, maybe, but leveler than Viktor, too. His congratulations are always sincere. Viktor could choose worse, he supposes.

He remembers it like a bone stuck in his throat, being young and blister-footed. Lilia. Yakov sometimes starts feeling disgustingly tender in the mornings. He fiddles with the shape of his flipphone in his pocket. Maybe he’s starting to get the appeal of those smartphones: they give you something to do with your hands, at least.

 

_ YAKOV SAYS he wont make us into romeo and juliet ALSO that im going to be on a “short leash” for the rest of the season  _ Viktor texts Chris during lunch break.

_ WOW this is the greatest thing ive ever heard what is the context of this?? _

_ and im assuming he doesn’t mean that in like the fun way ;)  _ Chris responds.

Viktor snorts at his phone screen, replies with  _ NO STOP!!!!! ill call you after practice i almost DIED _

_ ok but only IF i don’t die during practice  _ Chris texts back.

_ i mean thats always a given!!!  _ Viktor answers, because it is. 

 

“Yakov,” Viktor says, bouncing into Yakov’s office, hairtie on his wrist, picking his braid apart with absent ease.

“Vitya,” Yakov says. “Am I going to have a headache after this?”

Viktor presses his lips together, shrugs, starts the bundle his hair into a ponytail. “Um. Maybe?”

Yakov opens his desk drawer, pulls out a bottle of ibuprofen pointedly. 

Viktor sits down. “So. Someone asked me to be in another music video? Don’t worry, all I’ll be doing is making out with someone! No drugs, just. You know. Making out. No lyrics in the song are about drugs, either. I won’t miss any practice, I’ve worked it all out.” 

Yakov winces. He’s sure that if he said no Viktor would go and do it anyways. “Who will you be…’making out’ with?”

“Chris,” Viktor says.

Yakov sighs. “Fine, then.”

Viktor raises an eyebrow. 

“You’ve said it yourself: apparently Giacometti keeps you from doing anything stupid, even though I’ve yet to see evidence of that,” Yakov says. The boy better put his damn eyebrow down.

“Well,” Viktor says. “Remember when we, um, got the cartilage piercings?”

“Yes,” Yakov mumbles. Viktor had barely cried when he’d broken his collarbone, had said, “it’s fine, let me try it one more time” even as his face got red-splotched and then bloodless when the pain really hit, but he had whined endlessly over a damn infected ear piercing.

“Chris talked me out of getting. Other things pierced?”

Yakov is too old for this. “Get out of here, Nikiforov,” he growls.

“I just meant my nose!” Viktor says.

“ _ Go. _ ”

Viktor isn’t properly convinced by his growls anymore, Yakov thinks, but he does go. 

“You better have that step sequence improved by tomorrow morning,” he calls behind Viktor. Viktor will, of course.

 

Viktor doesn’t mind photoshoots: he likes to dress up and he likes to pose. He has learned to push past boredom, even though it will mean he will get back to whatever hotel he is staying at feeling blurry and tired.

This though, the video shoot, is  _ good _ . It reminds him of the first time he'd met the band: he’d never seen any of their shows because they never synced up with a competition, but Chris was friends with the guitarist, in that airy and unsurprising way that Chris ended up being friends with people all over, and so they'd gone to the flat where the guitarist lived with his boyfriend and his girlfriend and his girlfriend’s girlfriend and the band’s lead singer. They were all glorious glittery people, and Viktor had let them put candy-colored plastic alligator clips in his hair. 

Viktor and Chris had been making out, slow and lazy like they always did whenever they got high together, on one end of the big scavenged overstuffed couch, the lead singer sprawled on the other end.

“I just,” they’d said, waving a hand towards Viktor and Chris. “Isn’t kissing so good?”

Viktor had not replied: Chris’s lips were waxy with cheap lipstick and learning the newish feel of them was everything at the moment. 

“That’s what I want to music video to be. For the new single,” the lead singer had said, waving a hand their way. “Just all the hot queer people kissing. ”

“Huh,” the guitarist had said from somewhere in the room. Viktor didn’t really think much about it. “That’s...actually not a bad idea?”

It had devolved, a bit, from there, into an unenergetic argument about whether or not the lead singer ever had any good ideas. 

But here they are now, after months of planning to make things overlap, and someone gives Viktor very tight latex pants and someone else gives him a leather jacket, and someone else gives him a collar. 

“Nice,” Viktor says. 

“Pink mesh and glitter,” Chris says approvingly of his own outfit.

They’re filming the video at a little green house overflowing with people, the type with drawings on the walls and milk crates repurposed into seats. Viktor’s ended up in houses like this before, but only at night. They look different in the middle of the afternoon. 

Viktor and Chris are both experienced at making themselves look like an attractive pair when they’re kissing. It’s not hard: Viktor knows they’re both attractive, in general, but also they have the angles down, the angles that make guys in clubs come up and try to get in between them. 

“Great!” the person behind the camera says. “I think I got it.”

Viktor and Chris grin, and Chris hooks a finger through the O-ring of Viktor’s collar. “Just one question,” he says. “Can we take this home?”

The person behind the camera shrugs. “I mean. If you just forget to take it off…” they say, with a big exaggerated wink at Viktor.

“Nice,” Chris says.

“You can take  _ me  _ home anytime,” Viktor says to Chris, pressing a hand to his chest and fluttering his eyelashes.

“Shut up,” Chris says, kicking very gently at Viktor’s shins.

“Those are insured, be careful,” Viktor says.

Chris gives the collar a little yank, and the person behind the camera shoos them off so they can start filming the next shot. 

“Whoever wins tomorrow gets to wear it,” Chris says, tossing a grin over his shoulder as he tows Viktor away on just the crook of his finger.

“Sounds fair,” Viktor says. 

 

Mila watches the video. All of Viktor’s rinkmates do, whether they admit it or not. He’s hard to figure out, and good enough that everyone wants to, like if they can just see his blueprints maybe they can remake themselves in his image. 

Even though she’s just sixteen to Viktor’s twenty-one, Mila doesn’t particularly need what makes Viktor good: she’s good in her own way. Besides, there’s not much to see here. Just Viktor and Giacometti going at it. It’s way more than Mila ever wanted to see, of either of them. And the latex is a bit much (“It’s  _ art,”  _ Viktor will probably say, with solemn seriousness, if anyone teases him about it).

The song’s not bad, though. And the idea is cute, Mila thinks, pairs of people kissing with their pronouns at the bottom of the screen. And.

The next pair of people are two butches, she/her/hers and she/they/zirs in white text, and one of them is sharp-jawed, hair shaved close and cut around her ears, and Mila feels a sudden shock through her, the urge to be the one wrapping a hand around the curve of their neck. 

It feels like the shock of bracing for a fall, and then the next couple is a pair of girls with long glossy hair, lips wet and bright with gloss, and Mila thinks,  _ oh,  _ and things fit together in her head and in the warmth clenching in her stomach. 

It might be that she’s not staying after practice while the women's hockey team practices just to gather inertia for the metro ride back to her apartment. She thinks of how she always feels a little thump in her chest when the captain of the team smiles her way. Come to think of it, the captain smiles her way every day now. In fact, she’s started waving lately, too, and that something in Mila’s chest does a  _ big  _ thump.

It looks like she just might owe Viktor a favor.

“Giacometti?” Mila says the next day, plopping down next to Viktor on the bench while he’s sliding his blade guards on.

“A dreamboat? I know,” Viktor says, winking. “Sorry, he’s gay!”

Mila punches him in the shoulder. “Like I wouldn't know? And besides,” she says. “I like girls.”

“Oh. Sorry.” Viktor says. “What about Chris, then?”

“Why don't you just date him?” she says.

Viktor gives her a look like she'd just told him all the ice in the rink had evaporated. “What? I’m not dating Chris.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“I wouldn’t date  _ Chris _ ,” Viktor says, like doing that would possibly tear the fabric of the universe. 

Mila shrugs. “Just say you are, and then people will quit pestering you about who you are dating or not-dating.”

“I can’t,” Viktor says. “I couldn’t.”

“Fine, then,” Mila says. “If you want them to keep asking you about your love life and not your skating.” She stands up, hikes up her athletic pants. Viktor is staring through the floor, head tilted. “You think too much, Nikiforov,” she says.

“Funny,” Viktor says. “Yakov usually says I don’t think enough.”

“Maybe that’s it, actually,” she says, and goes to warm up. 

 

Viktor’s dancing on a table in a bar in Moscow when he meets Ilya. He’s theoretically in Moscow to scout rinks with Yakov, because Yakov says he has a good eye but not good enough, yet. Good enough for what, Viktor thinks, because he does not want to become a coach, he wants to skate. He's twenty-one. He has time. He goes with Yakov anyway.

It’s a good excuse to be in Moscow, at least. The city’s all trashy glam, which isn’t usually Viktor’s thing but is sure fun to put on and prance around in for a few nights. 

Maybe dancing is a loose term for Viktor’s doing: he lost his shirt at some point, his hair is damp with sweat and smells like beer, but he can feel eyes on him, so he must be moving in ways that look good.

Of course he is: he always does. 

A boy catches his eye, stretches a hand up to him. He’s got dark hair and lots of eyeliner and a lovely crooked grin. Viktor grins back, takes his hand and pulls. 

“Whoa!” the boy says, laughing, scrambling up and standing shakily next to Viktor, clutching Viktor’s arms. “You’ve got good balance.” It’s hard to hear over the pound of the bass, but he says it right into Viktor’s ear, so Viktor gets most of it. “What’s your name?”

Sometimes people don’t bother to ask Viktor’s name. It doesn’t matter much either way. “Pretty forward, are you?” Viktor says, running his fingers up the inside of the boy’s arm so he knows that he’s just teasing. “It’s Viktor.”

“Ilya,” the boy says.

“Do you dance?” Viktor says.

“Badly,” Ilya says. 

Viktor is not usually attracted to bad dancers. “Wanna go somewhere quieter?” he says.

“Sure,” Ilya says.

 

Ilya finds Viktor’s shirt (crumpled and sticking out of Viktor’s back pocket: it is a very small shirt). 

Viktor helps Ilya find his cellphone (in Ilya’s friend’s back pocket: it is very dead). They are giggling by the time they make it outside, the summer night cool but sitting city-still, no wind to blow off the car exhaust hanging grimy over everything. It’s familiar as Viktor’s own bed, but it still makes him feel electric and excited. 

“Hey, hey, let’s go get food,” Ilya says, digging through his pockets.

This isn’t how these things usually go, but it happens sometimes. “Ah, that’s okay,” Viktor says. He can’t eat the type of food that can be bought this late at night. “I’m on a diet.”

Ilya wrinkles his nose. “Are you a model or something?”

“I’m a figure skater,” Viktor says. 

“A  _ figure  _ skater,” Ilya says, but it’s not mocking or mean.

“If I do well this season, I’ll go to the Olympics,” Viktor says.

“The  _ Olympics _ ,” Ilya says, in the exact same tone.

“Yes, the Olympics,” Viktor says, and Ilya tosses an arm around Viktor’s shoulder. 

“Fine, then, no food,” he says. “Come home with me?”

“Sure,” Viktor says.

 

Ilya’s apartment building has a broken elevator, but that’s okay, Viktor’s pretty fit, and coordinated even when he’s still vaguely drunk. The hinges on the front door squeak, and the linoleum on the floor is cracked, but there are nice guitars sitting in stands, a white one and a black one and a gold one, and clusters of amps and cords and things. Viktor leans a hand against the wall to balance himself while he unties his converse. 

“Do you live here alone?” he says, because there is a row of shoes on the mat.

“I have two roommates, my bandmates, actually, but they’re out.” Ilya says. He sits on the floor to take his shoes off.

“You really don’t have very good balance,” Viktor says. 

Ilya smiles up at him. “Did you think I was just trying to flirt?”

“Well, it was kind of cute,” Viktor says. 

Ilya tosses his shoes on top of Viktor’s and gets to his feet. “Here,” he says, taking Viktor’s hand. He leads him to his bedroom: his mattress is on the floor, and there is a folding chair in the corner, and next to it a record player and stacks of records in old sleeves all crackly and stiff and yellow with age, the lightbulb bare.

Viktor raises an eyebrow, slides his hand into the neck of Ilya’s shirt and peers at the tag. “Your clothes are very nice,” he says. “You couldn’t get a real chair?”

“Maybe I spent all my money on my clothes,” Ilya says.

“You can get chairs on Craigslist. Or Avito.” Viktor says, tucking Ilya’s tag back into his shirt.

“True,” Ilya says.

“That's what I did. I have matching ones now, though,” Viktor says, wanders over to the stack of records, idly peeling his own shirt off again. David Bowie, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, T-Rex. He’d thought about choreographing a program to Bowie, had never gotten around to it. 

“Can I leave this here?” he says, flapping his shirt towards the folding chair.

Ilya ducks his head, smiling. “Sure.”

Viktor does, shakes his hair out so it falls just so over his shoulders, goes to Ilya with a smirk, hips swaying. Ilya’s eyeliner’s smudging onto the side of his nose. Viktor reaches out and tries to rub it away with his thumb, unsuccessful, then cups Ilya’s cheek in his hand and kisses him. He doesn’t worry about being sweet, just lets his mouth open and lets Ilya take and take and take. 

 

After, when Viktor’s slumped on the mattress, feeling all buzzy and well-fucked, Ilya gets up. “Do you like Transformer?” he says, holding up one of the records

Viktor knows it’s by Lou Reed, but. “Never heard it,” he says.

“And to think I thought you were musical,” Ilya says, joking.

“My mother loved rock music,” Viktor says. “She named me after Viktor Tsoi.”

“Ah, nevermind, I knew you had a rock and roll soul,” Ilya teases, pulling the record out of its sleeve tenderly.

“It was the pants, wasn’t it?” Viktor says. “I just thought they looked very Moscow.”

“Well,” Ilya says, putting the record on the turntable and lowering the needle. “I mostly just thought you moved like you heard music playing, always. But maybe it was the pants.” Said pants are draped over the folding chair. They're very glittery, and when they'd been on they'd been very tight. 

“I grew up here, you know,” Viktor says.

Ilya settles next to him on the mattress again. “That’s why you could pull off the pants. Where do you live now?”

“St. Petersberg,” Viktor says.

“Ah, I could see you there. You could have that whole delicate ethereal snob thing going on,” Ilya says, smiling ruefully towards the ceiling.

“You sound bitter,” Viktor says.

“Maybe a little,” Ilya says. “I grew up there. My parents still live there, but I couldn't stand it.”

“I think my parents still live around here,” Viktor says. “I'm not sure, though. We haven't really spoken in a while.” 

“Probably a good thing,” Ilya says. “God, my parents are so annoying.”

Viktor isn't sure what to say. He's not sure if he really considers anyone he knows to be annoying. Some people are uninteresting, sure, but annoying? He does like to get a rise out of people sometimes, maybe that makes him the annoying one. 

The bare bulb flickers, and the dark outside the windows is hazy and thick with streetlight glow. The song that plays is one Viktor recognizes, the one from Trainspotting. He watches a lot of movies. It gets too quiet around the apartment, and he's always too tired to read, his eyes skipping the lines and wandering away from the pages until his jaw gets clenched tight with frustration. He feels himself spiraling away, now, into an empty open space: Moscow streets and no gravity, folds his arms over his stomach and stares at the ceiling.

“I’m guessing you don’t want a cigarette, oh Olympian,” Ilya says.

“Guessed right,” Viktor says. “Guessing you don’t need your full lung capacity.”

“The raspier I sound, the more they like it,” Ilya says, sticking his tongue out at Viktor, but he tosses the pack of cigarettes he’d dug out from the pile of blankets across the room.

“A singer?” Viktor says. “And do you play those guitars? Or are they your roommates?” 

“I sing, I play, I perform,” Ilya says, with the elaborate joking grandeur that people make fun of Viktor for.

“I don’t sing and I don’t play, but I do perform,” Viktor says. “That’s the best part.”

“Of course,” Ilya says, and they share a searching little sideways glance. “Walk On the Wild Side” is playing. 

A little too languid for skating. A little too languid for dancing. But it makes Viktor see movie frames, makes him see that big empty open space, too. It’s a void to fall into. He says, “I’ve been thinking about cutting my hair lately. It’s been long since I was a kid.”

“Looking for a change?” Ilya says.

“Other people are,” Viktor says. “Surprise is kind of my thing.”

“You’ve already surprised me plenty,” Ilya says.

“See,” Viktor says, gesturing at the ceiling. “There’s this, too: my best friend, his name’s Chris, he always tells me I’m ruining my hairline, and I’m starting to think he’s right.” 

“Looks okay to me,” Ilya says. “I’ve cut hair, though, if you want me to cut it.”

“I’m still thinking about it,” Viktor says.

“So what I’m getting from this is that you’re stuck,” Ilya says.

“Maybe a little,” Viktor says.

“Me too,” Ilya says. 

Viktor wiggles onto his side. “Sometimes I find the song first,” he says, “or sometimes I find the dance first. Or sometimes it comes all at once. But when it’s right, for me, is when I know the feeling I want to skate.”

Ilya nods. “If I know the feeling I want to play, it all comes fast. But if I don’t, it’s like…” he pauses, says in English (his English sounds like he learned it more from records than from school, the way he makes the two words sound like music), “pulling teeth.”

“Pulling teeth,” Viktor echoes. It's vivid and gory and visceral and exactly what the experience of choreographing this season has been so far.

“Do you want to stay?” Ilya says, and Viktor realizes he'd been looking through Ilya, far away.

“I'd love to, but I've got to be at the rink early tomorrow,” Viktor says. He really is genuinely sorry, but he is also itching to get on the ice. Yakov’s got them some time before the rink would ordinarily open, and Viktor doesn't want to miss a minute.

“Not too early, I hope,” Ilya says. “It's  _ late _ .”

Viktor shrugs. “Sometimes I don't need much sleep.” 

“Here,” Ilya says. “Let me give you my number, at least. If you'll be around for a few nights.”

Viktor smiles. “Two.”

Ilya smiles back. “Call me.”

Viktor reaches for his phone, set on the floor by the mattress. “I will,” he says. He's not lying.

 

“So, what do you think, Vitya?” Yakov says the next morning, low in the dry noise of the rink. It’s the same words, the same tone, that Viktor remembers from when he was a teenager. After practice, “what do you think, Vitya?”, and Viktor would reply, “I could do better on,” the figure, the step sequence, the triple axel, the quad, and Yakov would nod, approvingly, and say, “do it again, then.” 

Afterward, Yakov would say, “walk back to the apartment and do your homework, Vitya,” but Viktor always stayed at the rink, sat in the bleachers with the textbooks and packets of coursework that he had to fill out, absently working math problems or conjugating English verbs with one eye on whoever Yakov was coaching, thinking,  _ she needs more power in her jumps, he has a lazy free leg, he needs more flexibility.  _

When Yakov would catch sight of Viktor in the bleachers, he would give that small nod again, so small that someone else might not have seen it, but Viktor always watched people very carefully, and he always saw.

“The little blond,” Viktor says now. The rink is packed with little blonds, but Yakov follows the line of Viktor’s eye and nods. 

“He’s got an attitude,” Yakov says.

“Don’t I?” Viktor says. 

Yakov presses his lips together, but it’s not unfond. 

Viktor texts Ilya as they’re leaving the rink:  _ if i come over tonight, will you play me a song on your guitar? _

He texts Chris next:  _ hey if i tell a boy that ill play his guitar with my mouth, is that too much?? _

_ not if you actually do ;)  _ Chris replies.  _ wait does he actually have a guitar??? _

_ of course!!  _ Viktor answers.

_ of course  _ Ilya replies.

 

“You know,” Ilya says that night. “I think I could write a song about you.”

“Really?” Viktor says. People write songs  _ for  _ him, when he commissions them, but  _ about  _ him. It’s like someone trying to write a song about a mirror, about smoke off a fire. “Ilyusha,” he says. “Write me a song that I can skate to, and I’ll skate to it.”

“It’ll have to be Olympic-worthy, right?” he says, smiling.

“Of course,” Viktor says, and kisses him hard, guitar sandwiched between them. 

“You’re going back to St. Petersberg tomorrow, aren’t you,” Ilya says. 

“Yeah,” Viktor says. One of the little switches of the guitar is cutting into his hip.

“I guess I’ll have to hope it writes itself quick, then,” Ilya says. 

“Make it a single,” Viktor says. “I’ll be in the music video. I’ve done those before.”

“Full of surprises,” Ilya says.

“You know the song that was playing when I was leaving last night?” Viktor says.

“Oh. Satellite of Love?” Ilya says, bending over his guitar. His hair’s too short to fall over his brow. It looks like he hasn’t taken his eyeliner off since Viktor had last seen him, maybe just applied more over it. 

“Yeah!” Viktor says. “I could skate to that. It’s good. It can’t be too dour!” 

“You’re the least dour person I’ve ever met,” Ilya says. “Don’t worry.” 

 

“Hey,” Viktor says, before he leaves. “Come visit me, sometime. If you’re not busy. My apartment’s nice. You can meet my dog.”

“That sounds great,” Ilya says. “We’re going on tour soon, but before that.”

Viktor hadn’t expected that Ilya actually would. It hadn’t been an empty offer, but Viktor got offers like that, sometimes, and never took them up. 

So when Ilya texts him asking if he would be around over the weekend, Viktor almost says no. It was half true: he had a full day of practice Friday and Saturday and Sunday. He didn’t want to leave Ilya alone in the apartment, alone with Makkachin. Something about that makes his stomach twist up. But he wants to see Ilya and talk to Ilya, and Ilya says that he’s finished the song, and Viktor really wants to hear the song.

_ sunday afternoon, and I don’t have to be at the rink until eight on monday?  _ Viktor texts back.  _ are you taking the rail? ill come pick you up _

_ yeah, that would be great! i’ll see you sunday afternoon then!  _ Ilya texts

 

Ilya’s band is good. Viktor watches their videos on youtube again and again. Their EP has even gotten press outside the country. It’s not that Viktor is surprised, but, he is.

And the song. The song makes Viktor feel like an astronaut unmoored.

“How very Space-Oddity,” Ilya laughs, when Viktor says as much.

Maybe it’s just Ilya.

“That part, where it gets all,” Viktor swoops his hand through the air to show what he means. “That’s where I’ll put my quad flip. Even though it’s at the end.”

“Cool,” Ilya says, vaguely, and Viktor feels a little sideswiped.

None of the boys he’d dated when he was a teenager had been skaters. He had forgotten since then, that wordlessness.

“You should cut my hair and film it,” Viktor says, “for the music video.” 

Ilya looks up at him, sharp and sudden, eye wide. “For real?”

“Yeah,” Viktor says. 

“Okay,” Ilya says, 

“I’ll go get scissors,” Viktor says. “I’ll be right back.”

“Oh my god, cool!” Ilya says. 

He goes out into the kitchen, hands shaking. He wishes that Chris was cutting his hair, or maybe Mila, she always looks at him like she sees right through him, or Yakov, who used to trim his bangs when he was a kid, in the bathroom sink, crooked so that Lilia would have to fix them afterwards.

“How are we supposed to film it?” Ilya says when Viktor comes back to the bedroom with the scissors, silver-bladed. 

“My phone?” Viktor says.

Ilya shrugs. “We’ll make the low quality look intentional, I guess.” 

 

The first thing Yakov notices is that Viktor is unsteady.

“Oh my god,” Mila says.

Viktor wobbles, fawnish, rubs the back of his neck half sheepish, half wondering, his hands unconsciously wandering up the empty space at the back of his neck.

“I'm guessing you have your choreography ready for me,” Yakov says. When Viktor had become his student, when he’d been little, his hair had brushed his shoulders. His mother had shrugged. “He won't sit still long enough to cut it.”

“Why waste time, then, if the child won't sit still?” Lilia had said the next year, when Yakov had pondered broaching the subject again.  

By the time Viktor had moved in with them, he had learned to sit still. His hand still flew to his head when Yakov suggested a haircut.

“Don't you want to look like your rinkmates?” Yakov had said. He'd noticed that kids had a horror of being the odd one out, even this young.

“No,” Viktor had said. That was when Yakov discovered that Viktor’s stubborn streak ran wider and deeper than he had ever anticipated: a nine year old clutching the edges of his chair so hard his hands shook.

“Well,” Yakov had said. “If you don't want to look like them, you're going to have to be better than them.” 

That had made Viktor look up. “Okay,” he'd said.

“I do,” Viktor says. He moves to toss his hair over his shoulder, as is his habit, stills when he find there’s nothing to toss.

“Alright,” Yakov says. “Go on and show me, then.”

 

The skeleton of it looks so empty, after: a music video, a European tour, a free skate. A rubber band stretched until it snaps. The long hours of practice that burn Viktor clean until he emerges: all glam rock and close-cropped hair and melancholy world-weariness. 

“Boys,” Christophe says, and some of the soothing patter of the rapid-fire French he and Viktor use with each other is lost over the phone, but it's still so good to hear him. “Are stupid. Except for me.”

“You’re the stupidest,” Viktor says. He wants Chris to rock him back and forth and scratch his scalp with his fingernails and feed him drinks and dance with him until they’re both wild with it.

“Chris,” Viktor says. “I wish I could just skate, all the time, and I didn't even need to stop to eat or sleep or anything.”

“I don't get it,” Chris says. “But at the same time, I do.”

Viktor sniffles into the phone, but he doesn't cry. His voice doesn't even sound teary. 

Chris can be surprisingly perceptive when it comes to people. And besides, like Viktor, skating sits tight right against his bones. “Jesus, Vik,” he says. “You're probably going to skate better than ever, this season, now.”

Viktor smiles. “And what are you going to do about that?”

“I guess I have to grow my hair out now or something,” he says. “What would I do without you to keep me on my toes?”

“You'd still be great,” Viktor says. “But not  _ as  _ great.” 

“Thanks,” Chris says, dry.

If he was with Chris right now he would pat his head, or jab him in the side, or just grin, and it would mean,  _ you make me skate better too,  _ even if it’s for different reasons. He’s not with Chris though, so all he has are words. “I live to please,” Viktor says. 

“That makes two of us,” Chris says, low and purring, and Viktor laughs.

 

“I didn’t know he cut his hair,” Yuuko says. She doesn’t have time to keep up with far-off famous figure skaters, parenthood casting a wide shadow between Yuuri and her. Sitting with her to watch the men’s Olympic figure skating would feel like old times if it wasn’t for the fact that she had to be home by eight-thirty and was constantly fielding calls from Takeshi and texts from her parents about how the triplets are doing. “Aw, Yuuri,” she teases. “Are you in mourning?”

He just smiles. Of course he isn’t. He isn’t even surprised by the hair. Of course someone who constantly reinvents themselves would eventually shed what had become a central part of their image.

He is surprised because he had thought Viktor had already burned and risen, yet here he was. He may as well sweat ice, Yuuri thinks. Viktor Nikiforov leaves behind a trail of broken records like his skate blades leave lines in the ice: astonishing, the panel of former figure skaters and network sportscasters say. 

As Yuuri watches Viktor stand on the podium, Russian national anthem tinny from the old TV that had gone in the back room when his parents had caved and bought a flatscreen, he thinks about what it would be like to stand beside him.

 

When Yuuri and Viktor’s phones both  _ ding _ at the same time, Viktor guesses right away that it is Phichit. Phichit is always creating new group chats with odd combinations of people: sets of extremely niche audiences for extremely specific content: Leo and Viktor and one of Phichit’s many cousins for baby snakes, Chris and Viktor and one of Phichit’s rinkmates in Bankok for old pictures of Britney Spears.

(“If you're so good at social media,” Yuuri says, “shouldn't you know this is what twitter’s for?”

“That's so brutal, Yuuri!” Phichit says in response, and continues as before.)

Viktor thinks, then, that he and Yuuri are not actually an odd combination of people. The thought pleases him.

Viktor doesn’t bother to pick up his own phone where it is sitting on the kitchen counter, just hooks his chin over Yuuri’s shoulder to see the screen of Yuuri’s phone. 

_ MY SWEET BOYS!  _ Phichit’s texted.  _ momma chulanont is literally holding a gun to my head as we speak!! thats a joke but for real she wants me to ask you two for a favor on behalf of our perfect nam _

“I would die for Nam,” Viktor says, very solemnly. She is definitely the favorite Chulanont cousin. She is very funny, as girl-crazy as Viktor is boy-crazy, and specifically as girlfriend-crazy as Viktor is husband-crazy, and had taken several days off work when Viktor and Yuuri had visited Bangkok to compete for Phichit’s status as their official tour guide. Phichit had informed her that they were not going to every romantic date spot she took her girlfriend without a date for himself. She’d found a boy and they’d all gone on several sets of triples dates.

_ Viktor says he would die for Nam _ … Yuuri taps out.  _ What’s the favor? _

_ I FORGOT Viktor’s an honorary lesbian  _ Phichit says.

This is true: according to Mila, Viktor’s “unexpectedly earnest, U-hauling approach to love post-getting-humped-by-Katsuki-at-an-official-function,” wow, “resonates with gay and bi women everywhere,” which is amazing. Mila always promises to make him a badge or a patch or a pin of some sort. She hasn’t yet but Viktor lives in hope. 

_ I would die for her if she wasn’t so mean to me and didn’t collaborate with my mom to get all my secrets,  _ Phichit continues.

_ ANYWAY the favor is: you know how she just released her album?? She has one EXTREMELY gay love song and momma chulanont told me to talk to you two because youre famous and tell you to be in a music video for it so nam can be famous too!! _

_ And I said MOM and she said DO IT so: i have to send you these long texts going off abt it!! _

“Yes,” Viktor says, wrapping his arms around Yuuri’s ribcage. 

“I knew you'd say yes,” Yuuri says. “So artsy.”

“Thank you,” Viktor says. “So are you saying yes?”

“I think, considering that we are both honorary Chulanonts, we really should,” Yuuri says.

“What if we don't and Momma Chulanont stops sending the milk candy and the coconut milk caramel ones and the durian chips?” Viktor says.

“Oh no,” Yuuri says.

“We have to,” Viktor says.

“It's our familial duty, I suppose,” Yuuri says. “I don't really think we're famous, though I do hope it works out for Nam.”

“Speak for yourself!” Viktor says. “Besides, Yuuri, we were in GQ!”

“I guess,” Yuuri says. He types out, _of course, yes, we would love to participate in momma chulanont’s scheme,_ which doesn't surprise Viktor at all because he’d known all through Yuuri’s waffling that Yuuri was not-so-secretly thrilled by the prospect of doing something romantic in front of a camera. 

It’s one of the things Viktor loves about him. Viktor get up on his tiptoes to kiss Yuuri’s cheekbone. Viktor can feel Yuuri’s face scrunch into a smile. He hopes Yuuri can feel his face scrunch into a matching one. 

 

They go through the video clips before sending them to Nam, late one night in the living room, only one dim lamp in the corner and the shine of the porch light through the window cutting the blue of the computer screen with warm gold glow. The videos are nothing special, home-movie-esque shots of their usual daily routine, filmed on their phones. 

Viktor wearing Yuuri’s glasses, standing in the kitchen imitating him. He’s awful at impressions, and so his Yuuri impression mostly consists of saying, “I can’t believe I’m the cutest most beautiful person in the world?” It works, though, because their phrasings and voices are worn together now into something similar enough that he does sound like Yuuri, if only a little. 

Yuuri in the backyard with Makkachin, showing off Makkachin’s tricks. Makkachin knows paw in Russian, English, and Japanese, because he’s an extremely clever boy. Makkachin flops over when he’s supposed to sit, demands belly rubs. Yuuri laughs, open-mouthed and free, towards Viktor, who is holding the camera, turns back to Makkachin still giggling into one hand while he provides the requested belly rubs with the other.  

A video filmed on the triplet’s high-quality camera of Yuuri and Viktor skating together. Viktor’s one injury too unstable to feel safe lifting Yuuri, so Yuuri lifts him, with concern for correctness but less for elegance. Yuuri looks elegant anyway, because he always does. Viktor would critique his own lack of grace, but he just likes to see the look on his face: careless with grins. He likes to see the rings on their fingers when they wrap their hands around each other’s waist. He likes the way they laugh into each other’s shoulders easy. He likes the way they swap jokes with the triplets in passing. 

“Wow, so boyband,” Yuuri says, pointing at the screen as Viktor does the best imitation of the K-pop choreographies the triplets make Viktor learn with them he can with skates on. 

“I missed my calling?” Viktor says. 

“Professional prettyboy,” Yuuri says.

“Wow,” Viktor says, running his foot up Yuuri’s leg. “I can’t believe you think I’m pretty!”

“We’re married,” Yuuri says, joking and pleased, and Viktor feels his face get hot and his throat drags in a sharp little breath, and any teasing retort he might’ve thrown back gets stuck.

Yuuri’s chest moves in one quick silent laugh, and he smiles fondly down at the laptop keyboard. “Oh, love,” he says without even looking at Viktor, snakes his arm over Viktor’s chest and under Viktor’s chin, cups the far side of Viktor’s cheek and pulls Viktor’s head so that it rests in the space between Yuuri’s head and his chest. 

Viktor feels, at times like these, like he’s just let all the air out of his lungs. No need to constantly push himself deeper to keep from floating off. After he lets all the air out of his lungs, he knows, he sinks, of course, to the bottom of the pool and stays there with no struggle, where the light falls across the concrete in flickering bright shapes and the water feels heavy and good. 

He still remembers one sharp memory from when he was a teenager. Lots of memories blur together for Viktor. He’s been a lot of places, and he spent time organizing into coherent narratives only the moments that would make for good interview material or choreography inspiration. The ones that stand out without any effort on Viktor’s part are all strange, vivid as the sort of dreams that stay all day after waking up. He is thirty, but his memories make up something much shorter.

He’d been eighteen, maybe, no younger, at least, because this had taken place in his first apartment, it had to have, because that was the apartment where the warm blocks of sunshine had fallen across his bed in the late afternoons. He had usually ignored the temptation to nap in them, because in the afternoons he had to work out, but he can’t recall if this happened one time, or many: he’d knelt by the bed, and laid his head in the sunshine, blinking at the sideways view of his sheets, the soft fuzz of them defined to knife-edges that his eyes strained to focus on. He’d wondered if that was what it would be like to lay his head in a lover’s lap, the way people did in novels. He had never laid his head in anyone’s lap, that he had been able to remember, then, not his mother’s or his father’s, let alone any of the boys he had dated. He usually kept his distance from those boys unless they were having sex. 

 

Viktor is eighteen, and he likes stories about people transforming into monsters. He knows it is because he worries about that, sometimes, himself. He knows he has the power to hurt, the younger skaters who look up to him, the boys who Viktor thinks like him better than Viktor likes them. 

He doesn’t know what he wants from those boys, but he knows what they want from him. 

Viktor is good at knowing what people wants, and he is good at knowing what he wants. He wants to transform into something that can show whatever he would like. He would like to turn himself into a blank canvas again, over and over, and he would like the paint on that canvas and over that canvas again and again. 

At eighteen, the year he doesn’t go the Olympics even though he knows he could, he hits a slump that he doesn’t pull himself out of until he is twenty-two. It isn’t a slump by anyone else’s standards, but it is by his. He hadn’t won gold at the Grand Prix final yet, no matter how many times he takes gold in other competitions. 

It seems like a storybook curse, sometimes, so much so that Viktor thinks the universe must be fixing some sort of moral lesson to that particular spot on that particular podium.

He thinks about that sparingly, as he thinks about everything but skating sparingly. 

All summer, he walks down the street to the rink with his earbuds in. He listens to classical music, imagines choreography. Imagines feelings, puts them on and takes them off and switches them out and mixes them up and sorts them out and groups them together like clothes or paint, like cards in a deck or stacks of photographs. 

The summer is warm, and sweat always sits clammy on his lower back by the time he reaches the rink, with its cool dry insides. He doesn’t mind: the clamminess goes away as soon as he gets on the ice and starts sweating again.

Everything on the ice is one narrow point that everything else fits through, like the eye of a needle or the lens of a camera or a pupil. This, Viktor thinks, is what love is: it burns good. 

**Author's Note:**

> inspirations for the weird music videos, in order:  
> 1\. a grimes-esque artist, heavily HEAVILY based on the venus fly video  
> 2\. a the weeknd-esque figure but gay, not based on any music video in particular, even though the weeknd doesn't quite fit with this timeline. just your typical pop music vid with a hot vik instead of a hot girl  
> 3\. again, not particularly based on any music video in particular. sparkly queer poppunk!!  
> 4\. velvet goldmine! as you mightve guessed!  
> me: writing a story about a gay man  
> also me: ok but i NEED as much lesbianism as possible in here  
> also me: writing a story all about viktors youth  
> me: ok but i NEED phichit, m'boy, in there SOMEWHERE or i'll cry  
> honestly if i wasn't extremely white and wouldn't butcher thai culture with the amount of research i have the spoons for i would write a whole fic about nam because. i love her best oc ive ever made probably.  
> also idk if the implication worked but the little blond with the attitude is, of course, yurio  
> EDIT: Viktor Tsoi is a Russian rock star!! Read abt him he's cool!!!


End file.
